Anyone new to my blog might get the impression from this post that I roam the streets and pore the listings for drag drag drag!!!!......and they'd be right!!!!! This has been a week of the cream of the crop from the old school Lavinia Co-op to hottest drag star of the moment, Johnney Woo's "Night of a Thousand Jay Aston's" which is on for the rest of the week at the Soho Theatre! Go!!!!
In my self appointed role of educating my ladies and gents, The Bloolips were London's answer to San Francisco's Cockettes (for homework there's a wonderful Cockettes documentary available on DVD, Sylvester himself was once a member!), in a way, in fact they may take umbrage at the comparison but a raggle taggle, creative, hilarious bunch of trannies on acid who put on glitter encrusted reviews in San Francisco in the 70's, but somehow I think they're the nearest thing London ever had. And one of the founder members of the Bloolips, Lavinia Co-op was appearing at Bistrotheque last week, so for a shot of the old school, Paul, Lucy, Sefton and I went east to see her. As luck would have it the fabulous Betty Bourne (another Bloolips founder member) was in the audience. Now, I've followed Betty's career in slightly stalkerish detail, from collaborations with Neil Bartlett at the Drill Hall, through his incredible performance as Quentin Crisp to an internet geezer-type character at the Soho Theatre....so of course photo-ops all round!!!!
Here's Lucy and me with Lavinia Co-op:
And with the legendary Betty Bourne:
Who, incidentally Lucy had the honour to be the dresser for in a production at the Donmar. Imagine! Whenever Lucy arrived at work, Betty would say "Hello Fancypants!", what anecdotes! What rouge! What a great job!
So, then last night was "Johnney Woo's Night of a Thousand Jay Astons" at the Soho Theatre. To fill you in, the life of the pretty one out of Buck's Fizz, as lipsynced to the back-catalogue of the Eurovision's favourite pop band! Hi-frigging-larious!!!! Also, the lovely Richardette our favourite landlord from the George and Dragon is one of the Jays so we were showing front-row support! In our party were two of the most photogenic ladies I know, Liliana (if you read this blog, you probably feel like you know her already!)
and Kat a.k.a. Dexy who has her own show on the Sumo channel you've gotta check out...
We had such a laugh, here's a few highlights.....
You need to get down there I think it's on til Saturday......
Madame x
Labels: Betty Bourne, Dexy Suicide, Johnney Woo, Lavinia Co-op, Night of a Thousand Jay Astons, Richardette, The Bloolips
